The characteristic attribute of the passive generative power was
expressed in symbolical writing, by different enigmatical
representations of the most distinguished characteristic of the female
sex: such as the shell or _Concha Veneris_, the fig-leaf, barley corn,
and the letter Delta, all of which occur very frequently upon coins and
other ancient monuments in this sense. The same attribute personified as
the goddess of Love, or desire, is usually represented under the
voluptuous form of a beautiful woman, frequently distinguished by one of
these symbols, and called Venus, Kypris, or Aphrodite, names of rather
uncertain mythology. She is said to be the daughter of Jupiter and
Dione, that is of the male and female personifications of the
all-pervading Spirit of the Universe; Dione being the female Dis or
Zeus, and therefore associated with him in the most ancient oracular
temple of Greece at Dodona. No other genealogy appears to have been
known in the Homeric times; though a different one is employed to
account for the name of Aphrodite in the “Theogony” attributed to
Hesiod.
The _Genelullides_ or _Genoidai_ were the original and appropriate
ministers or companions of Venus, who was however, afterwards attended
by the Graces, the proper and original attendants of Juno; but as both
these goddesses were occasionally united and represented in one image,
the personifications of their respective subordinate attributes were on
other occasions added: whence the symbolical statue of Venus at Paphos
had a beard, and other appearances of virility, which seems to have been
the most ancient mode of representing the celestial as distinguished
from the popular goddess of that name—the one being a personification of
a general procreative power, and the other only of animal desire or
concupiscence. The refinement of Grecian art, however, when advanced to
maturity, contrived more elegant modes of distinguishing them; and, in a
celebrated work of Phidias, we find the former represented with her foot
upon a tortoise; and in a no less celebrated one of Scopas, the latter
sitting upon a goat. The tortoise, being an androgynous animal, was
aptly chosen as a symbol of the double power; and the goat was equally
appropriate to what was meant to be expressed in the other.
The same attribute was on other occasions signified by a dove or pigeon,
by the sparrow, and perhaps by the polypus, which often appears upon
coins with the head of the goddess, and which was accounted an
aphrodisiac, though it is likewise of the androgynous class. The fig was
a still more common symbol, the statue of Priapus being made of the
tree, and the fruit being carried with the Phallus in the ancient
processions in honour of Bacchus, and still continuing among the common
people of Italy to be an emblem of what it anciently meant: whence we
often see portraits of persons of that country painted with it in one
hand, to signify their orthodox elevation to the fair sex. Hence, also
arose the Italian expression _far la fica_, which was done by putting
the thumb between the middle and fore-fingers, as it appears in many
Priapic ornaments extant; or by putting the finger or thumb into the
corner of the mouth and drawing it down, of which there is a
representation in a small Priapic figure of exquisite sculpture,
engraved among the _Antiquities of Herculaneum_.